BENJAMIN CÖLLE

Benjamin Cölle was born in 1980 in Filderstadt, Germany. After graduating from high school in Stuttgart in 1999, he got his first full-time job at a business consultancy company, Management Partner, where he worked as a multi-media designer and photographer, documenting various seminars and conferences, and was responsible for graphic design and presentations (1999/2000).

He went on to do his civil service, first in Berlin, then in Amsterdam, where he worked for UNITED for Intercultural Action, a European-wide network of more than 500 anti-racist and human rights organisations. His job there was the co-ordination of European-wide campaigns, the organisation of conferences in different European cities (where he facilitated video workshops) and the programming and updating of the website (2000-2003).

He returned to Berlin in 2003, where he studied Cultural Studies, African Studies and Politics at the Humboldt University, focusing on film & media theory, aesthetics, art theory, documentary film production and international relations (2003-2010). Part of his M.A. thesis work was done as a graduate research student at Goldsmiths (University of London) in the department of visual culture (2009/2010). For the duration of his studies he was a recipient of a scholarship from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

While finishing his studies, he started working for Flying Moon Film Production in Berlin (2010), first as an intern, then as a production assistant, using his theoretical knowledge for story development (fictional and non-fictional), his technical skills for film editing and website programming and his organisational skills for project co-ordination notably on Swans, a feature film by film Hugo Viera Da Silva and The Loneliest Planet, a feature film by Julia Loktev.

Since the end of 2010, Benjamin has been junior producer at INDI FILM. Before then, he worked as assistant director and production manager for documentary films and feature films and as graphic- and web-designer (amongst other things, he co-ordinated the relaunch of INDI FILMS’ website). When ARTE proposed a cross-media project for The Cathedral Builders (WT), a documentary project that INDI FILM was developing at that moment together with Seppia (France), Benjamin took on the position as cross-media producer.